By Elle Reynolds
After months of fawning over the septuagenarian president, corporate media already looked bad. But now even they can’t cover for the nowhere-to-be-found Biden as his disorganized withdrawal from Afghanistan descends into heartbreaking chaos, and they look even worse for ever trying to.
On Monday, CNN’s Clarissa Ward reported that nearby Taliban members who were shouting “Death to America” seemed “friendly at the same time.” Her analysis is a fitting soundbite to represent the shallow stupidity of the corporate media’s failed Afghanistan reporting.
https://twitter.com/sophiabfisher/status/1427277156913139716?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427277156913139716%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2021%2F08%2F16%2Fthe-media-cant-hide-from-their-terrible-afghanistan-reporting%2F
Over and over, talking heads scorned the Trump administration’s efforts to get out of Afghanistan as disorganized, foolish, and planless. The messaging about the incoming Biden administration — on Afghanistan and everything else — was that seasoned professionals were finally back in the situation room and the hotheaded Trumpsters who wanted to throw the system to pot were out.
“With Afghanistan decision, Biden restores foreign policymaking process that Trump had largely abandoned,” headlined the Washington Post in April 2021.
“To many in the White House, widely reported accounts of the disagreements [between Biden officials] miss the point, especially in light of President Donald Trump’s habit of not even consulting the military before tweeting abrupt diktats on troop withdrawals,” the Post’s Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan wrote.
Prior to this week, the propaganda press crowed that incompetence had kept Trump from completing an Afghanistan withdrawal, and lauded the coming victory that withdrawal would be for Biden.
“Trump’s crippling Attention-Deficit-Disorder and the serial incompetence of both him and his team let a huge opportunity slip away — and now Biden will reap the rewards,” said Keith Naughton in The Hill.
“Trump blew it, and now Biden will get the win,” he added, under the headline “Afghanistan withdrawal: Trump fumbles, Biden scores.”
“Leaving Afghanistan the Right Way” was the Wall Street Journal editorial board’s synopsis of Biden’s plan, back in February.
Trump’s “reckless” deadline of withdrawing by May 1 “was driven by Donald Trump’s domestic political instincts — not a strategic calculation,” the board noted. “President Biden is wisely reviewing that decision.”
CNN coverage echoed the description of Trump’s plan as “reckless,” choosing to describe Biden’s approach with a quote from his former boss about Biden’s “bold leadership.”
One of the things I’ve discussed before is how outlets can frame the narrative they want by focusing on people who support or oppose a certain policy. It’s misleading, but also a calling card of @CNN. pic.twitter.com/sypGhatZdZ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 14, 2021
Journalist Drew Holden also pointed out the tone change between administrations from the New York Times, TIME Magazine, and other corporate outlets.
Once upon a time, @nytimes told us that Trump’s decision was a capitulation to the Taliban where we would get nothing in return – as if blood not shed and treasure not spent means nothing.
But Biden’s call? Well, for some reason these concerns seem to have evaporated. pic.twitter.com/1eYzfFv8uA
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 14, 2021
This one from @TIME might be the most egregious of them all. I mean. Cmon. pic.twitter.com/z54ICzgGi9
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 14, 2021
MSNBC found someone (who now happens to be a member of Biden’s cabinet) to quote saying Trump’s foreign policy decisions were made “impulsively, erratically, emotionally” and then found someone else (a former running mate of Hillary Clinton) to describe the Biden administration’s plans for withdrawal as “the right call.”
Corporate media spent Biden’s entire presidency up to now hyping Biden’s looming exit from Afghanistan, after painting the Trump team as incompetent. Now, the Biden team has woefully failed to deliver. Biden’s failure to have any perceptible strategy in pulling out of Afghanistan is exactly what the media predicted from Trump, and assured us would never happen under the gentleman from Scranton.
And now they look like idiots, who never knew what they were talking about (or if they did, were never honest about it).
As the Biden administration seeks to blame its embarrassing failure on Trump — an excuse that doesn’t hold up under the most basic scrutiny — some in the media will surely seek to cover their own role in the fiasco by doing the same thing.
“On Monday, CNN’s Clarissa Ward reported that nearby Taliban members who were shouting “Death to America” seemed “friendly at the same time.” ”
The left thinks everyone lies and screams threats for political effect. They can’t understand those who really mean what they say. Leftists call people racists just on the basis on disagreements of opinion while they themselves exhibit real racist traits. So, they convince themselves that those who shout “Death to America!” are just being rhetorical, even though they have killed Americans whenever they can.
Though she is media, it is the same mentality that runs the country today.
““At the heart of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign was a single word: competence,” wrote CNN’s Chris Cillizza on Monday with hands-in-the-air dismay. “After four years of Donald Trump’s incompetence in, well, everything, the Biden argument was that the country badly needed a steady hand on the tiller.””
I think the problem is that the left has no idea what competency looks like. Like a military operations plan, a withdrawal plan probably doesn’t survive the first encounter with the enemy. Just as Bush’s withdrawal plan from Iraq, delayed time and time again by conditions on the ground, Trump’s plan was to react to conditions on the ground. If Trump’s actions were a guide, if the Taliban had begun taking over provinces as we withdrew, he would have stopped the withdrawal and attacked the attackers.
But not this idiot. He simply follows the “fire and forget” policy, puts his plan in place and ignores the events surrounding it. The moron Obama did the same thing in Iraq. That same moron stood by while criminal Hillary destroyed Libya for her own profit opportunities.
Trump knew exactly what he was doing and there is no possible argument that can be made that would show he would have failed anywhere near this scale in the execution of his plan, even though we now know much of the military leadership was undercutting his authority.
Where are all the military leaders criticizing idiot Biden’s headlong and ill-advised retreat, as they criticized Trump?